Charter Flight Estimates

To estimate a charter flight, the option must first be enabled and set up by your System Administrator. For more information, please see Charter Setup.

You or your prospective customers supply the information that allows the Charter Estimator to determine the legs of the flight and the "purpose" of each leg.  To do so, you must tell the Estimator whether your proposed flight is one way, round trip, or return another day.

The Estimator always assumes that every charter begins and ends at your home field.  You or your customers enter their pickup point, an optional intermediate stop, and a destination.  Assuming that your home airport is ABC and that your customer wants to board at TEB, pick up an associate at PNE, and has a destination of DCA, the legs of a one-way flight are:

ABC to TEB		Positioning leg
TEB to PNE		Passenger-carrying leg
PNE to DCA		Passenger-carrying leg
DCA to ABC		Positioning leg

To calculate a "return another day" trip, the Estimator multiplies its final answer by two.  "Return another day" is really two one-way trips.

To calculate a round trip, the Estimator drops the last leg (DCA to ABC) and multiplies its final answer by two.  A round trip simply eliminates the need to position the aircraft.

Given the inputs above and the outputs from the Charter Estimator, most of the calculations become obvious.  However, some calculations require additional explanation:

• The Charter Estimator prepares a trip estimate for each type of aircraft in your charter fleet.  The "type" is actually the resource record's "Short Description" field -- the same as for your rental / instruction aircraft.  Similar aircraft should have the same "type" to avoid duplication by the Estimator.
• The same aircraft and pilots can be used for rental/instruction, scenic, and charter operations.  MyFBO will assure the proper scheduling of these "multiple use" resources.
• The data used to estimate the cost of the captain (and co-captain if any) is from the first captain (alphabetically by last name) "qualified" for the aircraft in question.  To establish qualifications, place identical codes in both the aircraft's and the captain's "Grades" field in their resource records.  If a captain is qualified for more than one aircraft, multiple grades can be entered (no spaces, no commas).  For more information, please see Grade Limitations. If all charter captains are qualified for all charter aircraft, nothing need be entered.
• If any leg of the trip exceeds the aircraft's "Range," the Estimator will automatically insert a fuel stop.  No specific airport is selected for the stop.  Rather an additional "Routing Time" is added to the aircraft charges for that leg of the flight.  And an additional one-half hour plus the Routing Time is added to the overall duration of the flight, thereby increasing the charges for the captain and co-captain.
• Overnight fees for the crew and flight attendant hourly cost are taken from the Charter Estimator Parameters, and percentages for excise tax calculations are taken from the Excise Tax Parameters. 

Customers Using the Charter Estimator

For customers to estimate charter flights, the Estimator must first be linked to your web site, see Linking to MyFBO.  Customers who use the Charter Estimator are given the option to check availability of a selected aircraft for their day of planned travel. If the aircraft is available, the customer may then request a reservation via e-mail.  This will be sent to the e-mail address recorded in your Identification / E-mail Parameters.

Staff Using the Charter Estimator

Staff use the Estimator within the MyFBO system from the FrontDesk Tab. They can either simply estimate flights, or estimate and reserve a flight from the estimate. The menu choices for both options are shown in the screen shot below.

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